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Electricity Consumers
Need a Real Choice

By

David Howell

Updated May 21, 1996 12:01 a.m. ET

We should forgive international observers for thinking that regulators of Britain's privatized electricity industry are a bit confused. On the one hand, officials seem to be rejecting vertical reintegration in the industry-generators and distributors of power getting together again, as they were in the bad old days of a monolithic nationalized electricity industry. The ambitions of both the major generators in England and Wales, National Power and PowerGen, to buy regional distribution companies were recently blocked.